Rand Paul Wants to Water Down Bill Banning Specific Chinese Military-Linked Biotech Companies

Senator Rand Paul wants to water down legislation that would bar federal contracts with certain Chinese biotech firms and is objecting to provisions singling out specific Chinese military-linked companies.

That legislation, the BIOSECURE Act, names four companies that would be barred from receiving federal contracts. There’s extensive evidence linking all of those firms to China’s military, and one of them, BGI Genomics, has been placed on a Pentagon blacklist for its relationship with the People’s Liberation Army.

The bill would also prohibit the recipients of federal funds from doing business with the named firms — and thus effectively blocking the Chinese biotech companies from operating in the U.S.

The legislation will be brought up for a markup before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee on Wednesday morning. Lawmakers were initially supposed to consider it at a committee meeting on January 31, but chairman Gary Peters was forced to yank it at the last minute after Paul introduced several amendments that were widely viewed as “poison pills” to tank the bill. One of those amendments would have required the intelligence community to compile a report on every company that operates in China.

Paul, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, also introduced a measure that would have stripped direct mentions of the four firms from the legislation, thereby giving the president more discretion on how to comply with the legislation.

A congressional staffer familiar with the negotiations behind the bill told National Review that Paul’s staff has objected to naming the firms on free-market grounds.

Asked about Paul’s objection to naming the firms, a spokeswoman for the senator said this was a misstatement of his position.

“This is a gross mischaracterization of his position, which would be evident to anyone that actually took the time to review the amendments Senator Paul filed to the bill,” a spokeswoman for Paul told National Review. She didn’t further clarify the senator’s position.

Efforts to restrict Chinese biotech companies’ operations in the U.S. have come up against fierce opposition. When lawmakers tried to insert a version of the current proposal into last year’s defense-policy bill, Peters blocked the provision from being included. After National Review reported on his stance in December, he co-sponsored the BIOSECURE Act this year with the initial provision’s supporters.

Under pressure from media scrutiny and the threat of ostracization by China hawks on Capitol Hill, lobbying firms that worked for BGI Genomics and former subsidiary MGI — including Steptoe and Johnson and the Vogel Group — dropped the companies from their roster of clients.

Meanwhile, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a trade group representing WuXi AppTec, another firm named in the bill, has advocated against the legislation. House CCP committee chairman Mike Gallagher requested that the Justice Department launch a review into whether BIO’s advocacy on the matter constitutes a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

With Gallagher, a key sponsor of the legislation, retiring from his congressional seat at the end of this term, supporters are concerned that it will lose momentum if it is not passed. They worry that the longer the process around the bill stalls, the more success that lobbyists for BGI Genomics and WuXi AppTec will have in gumming up the deliberations surrounding it.